Rahm Emanuel is giving every indication that he’s running for president in 2028—including by coming on Honestly yesterday.
Emanuel, now 65 years old, has spent decades making a name for himself as one of the Democratic Party’s fiercest and most effective partisans—a true knife fighter, and you’ll see that spiciness in this interview.
But can the dealmaker, the guy so adept at pulling the levers of power behind the scenes, really become the front man? And as the party continues to pull leftward, is there really room for an old-school moderate liberal like Rahm to be the standard-bearer? And lastly, but perhaps most importantly, does he have the bedside manner to be president? Or will people love his blunt nature and find it refreshing?
He certainly has a résumé to run on. While still in his early 30s, he became a key adviser to Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, and before he was 40, his career was already the stuff of legend, thanks to stunts like sending a dead fish to a Democratic pollster who had upset him. And after Clinton won the White House in 1992, when staffers met around a picnic table to celebrate their accomplishments, Rahm instead picked up a knife and began listing Democrats he felt were insufficiently supportive of the campaign. “Dead man!” he yelled after each name, jabbing the knife into the table.
His nickname—“Rahm-bo,” after Sylvester Stallone’s fearsome commando—became so pervasive that even his mom started calling him that. Meanwhile, in Hollywood, Rahm became the inspiration for a leading character on The West Wing, Josh Lyman.
He spent five years as a top White House aide following Clinton’s victory. Rahm then returned to his native Illinois and was elected to Congress in 2002. In 2006, he was the mastermind of the Democratic Party’s wildly successful effort to retake the House of Representatives, making Nancy Pelosi speaker. In 2008, Barack Obama made Rahm his first White House chief of staff. He guided the new president through his tumultuous first two years in office, a period when Obama signed Dodd-Frank, a massive stimulus package, and the Affordable Care Act, into law.
Then, in 2011, Rahm was elected to the first of his two terms as Chicago’s mayor. And when Joe Biden won the White House, he made Rahm his ambassador to Japan, giving the maybe–presidential contender direct foreign policy experience in what some would argue is America’s most important ally.
Now the question is whether a man who ran Chicago and served every living Democratic president is too conservative for Democrats.
Today on Honestly, Bari asks Rahm how moderates on the left and the right can get elected, about free trade, China, Israel, Iran, Trump, Biden, Obama, Zohran Mamdani, and the American dream—and what his party needs to do to win back Congress in the midterms next year, and the White House in 2028. And more deeply, if the Democrats can ever win a national election again after losing the trust of the American people.
It’s a fascinating conversation with one of the most unique, knowledgeable, and—dare we say—zesty figures in politics today.
Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?
Linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear that kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.” Hype twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to replace meaningful work with jobs that treat people like machines. In The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want(Harper, 2025), Bender and Hanna offer a, and wide-ranging take-down of AI hype across its many forms. They show you how to spot AI hype, how to deconstruct it, and how to expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Bender and Hanna expose AI hype for what it is: a mask for Big Tech’s drive for profit, with little concern for who it affects.
Alfred Marcus is Edson Spencer Professor at the Carlson School.
House lawmakers will start their Summer break a few days early today, vacating the capital until September. They’re leaving early because Republican Speaker Mike Johnson is trying desperately – desperately – to avoid holding any votes on releasing materials related to the Jeffrey Epstein case. Over at the White House Tuesday, President Donald Trump did his best to turn attention away from Epstein and toward his latest conspiracy de jour, which is really just a remix of his favorite first-term conspiracy surrounding Russia’s interference in the 2016 election (A.K.A. Russia, Russia, Russia). But House Democrats say no dice. California Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia, ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, talks about what Democrats are doing to keep the Trump administration in check.
And in headlines: Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba is out of a job…maybe, Trump announced a new trade deal with the Philippians, and the United Nations delivered a stark warning about mass starvation in Gaza.
We’ll tell you how the Justice Department is hoping to learn more information about the Jeffrey Epstein case, and why the House is leaving the capital early in the face of the Epstein files.
Also: new trade announcements, including a deal with one of America’s biggest economic partners.
Plus: what’s behind a top FEMA official’s decision to leave the agency, how the music world is paying tribute to a legendary rock star, and which companies are seeing a boom as part of the “meme stock” craze.
Those stories and even more news to know in about 10 minutes!
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About Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today’s top stories your business. Formerly known as Robinhood Snacks, TBOY Lite is hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell.
In Mark Kurlansky's novel Cheesecake, a Greek family living on Manhattan's Upper West Side sets out to follow a recipe dating back to ancient Rome. What results is a block-wide battle to make the best cheesecake, set against the backdrop of a quickly-changing neighborhood. In today's episode, Kurlansky talks with NPR's Scott Simon about coming across the oldest written recipe, the food writer's relationship to fiction, and Kurlansky's own favorite cheesecake.
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Eating disorders are complicated illnesses that skyrocketed among teenagers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pediatrician Eva Trujillo says they "literally rewire the brain," decrease brain size, and make it harder to concentrate and to regulate emotions. Malnutrition can slow the metabolism, impact bone density and even lead to cardiac arrest. But Eva says, with the right treatment, people can also recover fully. She's the president of the International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals and co-founder of Comenzar de Nuevo, a leading treatment facility in Latin America. Today on the show, host Emily Kwong talks about the physical and mental impacts of eating disorders with Dr. Trujillo and Moorea Friedman, a teen mental health advocate and host of the podcast Balancing Act. Plus, how to recover in a world steeped in diet culture.
Want us to cover more mental health topics? Tell us by emailing shortwave@npr.org! We'd love to know what you want to hear from us!
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On this episode, Peter Boettke chats with Mark Pennington on Mark's latest book, Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2025). Pennington argues that Foucault's ideas on self-creation, disciplinary power, and biopolitics align with key liberal concerns about social control and individual agency. He critiques how both liberals and Foucauldian critics have misunderstood or ignored these connections, and drawing on thinkers like Hayek, Buchanan, and Ostrom, he calls for a liberalism that emphasizes pluralism, resists technocratic overreach, and engages more deeply with the insights of the humanities.
Dr. Mark Pennington is Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Pennington is currently director of the Centre for the Study of Governance and Society.
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